Just Desserts
by Robin4
Summary: Villains do not get happy endings. Rumplestiltskin was a fool to think otherwise. Post 4x14, "Unforgiven". Spoilers!


**Just Desserts**

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Summary: _Villains do not get happy endings. Rumplestiltskin was a fool to think otherwise. Post 4x14, "Unforgiven"._

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_Note: Personally, I think that the kiss between Will and Belle will turn out to be a red herring, or that what Rumplestiltskin saw was an illusion created by the Author or Cruella and Ursula. But Rumplestiltskin doesn't know that._

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He should not be surprised. Belle has always been better than he deserves. Yet Rumplestiltskin never even _imagined _that Belle would move on. Not Belle, who had fought so long and so hard for their love, who had claimed to love all of him. Yes, he deserved her anger after the way he had lied to her and used her. He never should have done that; he'd just not known _how _to tell her the truth, particularly after she'd thought she'd used the real dagger to control him—and to force him into endangering _her_, something he'd sworn he would never _ever _do, because she was the only one he had left, the only light in his life and the only one in this miserable world who saw him as something other than a monster. So, he had accepted her anger; he had deserved every bit of it. Being exiled had utterly broken him, but he had deserved that, too.

"_I don't want to lose you," _he had begged her at the town line.

"_You already have."_

Never had those words made more sense. Had this Will Scarlet creature been in the picture even then? Had her tears been more for the man she had once hoped he'd be but Belle had already moved on from loving? She had almost _broken his curse _once, but now she'd moved on. After a little more than six weeks, Belle was kissing another. Rumplestiltskin had thought she was his True Love. He had thought that although he'd hurt her deeply (no more than she wounded him, a traitorous voice inside him reminded him, but he brushed it aside because _he had started it _and Rumplestiltskin always owned up to what he did), that he had not lost her love.

Now he knew that he had.

She loved another. She was glad that he was gone. Cruella and Ursula had seen her, and they'd said that she hadn't asked about him, that she seemed to have moved on. And apparently Belle _had_. Just watching her smile at that thief broke his heart, but not because Will Scarlet was the kind of man that he never thought Belle would have gone for. It broke his heart because it was _his _fault. He'd hurt her, he'd used her, and when he should have opened up to her and told her why he was so _terrified _of being controlled again, he instead hid behind lies and hoped he could make it up to her later. He had done this to himself, and wasn't that the story of his life?

Had he been a braver man, or had died in battle, Milah would never have left him for a pirate. She would not have had to live with the stain of the village coward in her bed and in her life. Had he been some handsome prince, Cora would never have left him. Instead he was an ugly monster, good only for gaining power from. Milah had left him for a pirate, Cora for a prince. And now Belle, the one woman he had been so certain would never break his heart, had left him for a thief.

Villains did not get happy endings.

Perhaps he was simply destined to be alone. He'd lost his son—twice—because of being the Dark One. The first time because he had frightened him away, and then the second time because Baelfire had been so desperate to get to his own family that he had fallen for a witch's tricks. Had Rumplestiltskin _not _been the Dark One, Baelfire never could have tried to resurrect him, and his son would still be alive. Belle would still have moved on, but at least then he would have been dead, would have died knowing that she loved him and not have to live with the fact that she clearly did not. Stumbling back into the shadows was all he had it in him to do; even once the happy pair had vanished from the windows of what used to be _his _shop, he just stood there brokenly. He'd been a fool to think that he could have anything akin to happiness, that he wouldn't destroy himself and everyone he loved along with him.

_Villains don't _deserve_ happy endings._

What a fool he'd been, coming to Storybrooke full of ideas that he could somehow find the Author, could somehow learn how and why that damn hat—the one obsession _every _Dark One unavoidably shared—had shown up just when he'd vowed to be a better man. At first he had thought that the hat being in Storybrooke was good fortune, that he'd finally found a way to free himself, but now Rumplestiltskin was thinking clearly enough to know that was a fool's hope. The hat had not appeared by accident. _Someone _had a hand in that, and if Regina's theory about the Author was right, it didn't matter how hard he tried to be better. He had _killed _himself to save these people, and yet his beloved son had still died. He had still been brought back as Zelena's slave, and now he had lost Belle. Everything worth living for in his life was gone, and he burned to know why. He hadn't expected the Author to fix anything for him—Rumplestiltskin knew that he had to fix what he had done to Belle himself—but he had wanted to make sure that some damn Author couldn't force him to mess it all up again.

Apparently, it was too late for that. Too late to matter. Rumplestiltskin could only stare blankly at the front of the shop as the lights went out, and he finally managed to make himself turn away before he could see Belle walking away with another man. But he didn't leave. He just stood in the shadows, feeling too empty to cry.

He didn't deserve self-pitying tears, after all. He had lost her, and it had been his fault. Of course she didn't love him, anymore. Of course she hated him. Rumplestiltskin should have known better than to love in the first place, should have known better than to open his heart again. It never ended well…and he had known that all along.

Yet he still loved her. Damn it all, he always would. He just didn't know what he was going to do now that his entire reason for living was gone. Power…power was not enough. Not when he'd had True Love in his grasp and wasted it. He'd never wanted to choose power over Belle; he'd just wanted both and never understood why he was supposed to choose one or the other. He _needed _the power to protect her, to keep from being the wretched and bullied spinner, the coward, he had been. Rumplestiltskin didn't want power for its own sake. Not usually, anyway, though sometimes his curse made the siren song of gathering _more more more _impossible to ignore. But he had never wanted to have to choose between Belle or power. He didn't understand why she'd wanted that…and now he never would. _She's gone, dearie. She loves another, probably more than she _ever _loved you, _a voice inside him whispered. _She loved the idea of you, the idea of slaying the beast. Never actually _you_. You knew that all along, though, didn't you?_ Perhaps he had. But he had loved all of her, even her infuriatingly impulsive desire to be a hero.

Belle had not, however, loved all of him. Or at least not enough. For six weeks of begging his way to New York to put his plans in motion, he had comforted himself with the knowledge that he could not have hurt her so badly if she had not loved him as he loved her, that he _would _find a way to make this right. That somehow, against the odds, he would earn her love back.

Fool's hopes, again.

He was a villain. Villains did not get second chances. Villains did not get happy endings. Villains got to watch their wives be in love with another man, got to hold their sons in their arms as they died. _This is all I am, _he thought brokenly. _A villain._

Rumplestiltskin had no idea where to go from here. All he knew was that it didn't matter as long as Belle was beyond his reach.

_It's forever, dearie._

And yes. She was gone. _Forever._

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_A/N: Thanks for reading, and please do drop a note and tell me what you think!_


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